BOULDER — Kaia was burned over 70 percent of her body, but officials said she had her neighbor to thank that she didn’t die in a Boulder apartment fire Saturday night.
A maintenance man who also lives in Fairways Apartments, Dion Gonzalez, pulled the 26-year-old woman to safety as the fire raged around them, witnesses said.
Officials identified her Sunday as Kaianna Kadivnik. Witnesses and neighbors identified a second victim as Susan Moi, 21. Both women were in critical condition Sunday at University Hospital in Denver.
Gonzalez “heard someone calling for . . . help and was able to pull her out of the stairwell. He must have gone up a flight of stairs to get to her,” Mary Roosevelt said Sunday of Kadivnik. Roosevelt is chief executive officer of Thistle Community Housing, the nonprofit owner of the Fairways Apartments at 5620 Arapahoe Ave.
She said Gonzalez lives with his wife in a first-floor unit and is in his mid-40s.
He dragged the woman from the second-floor landing of the three-story building, she said.
Adelita Urioste, 22, lives on the second floor.
She said she saw Gonzalez carry the neighbor she knows as Kaia down the stairs. She said Kaia was still in flames and was thrown onto the grass.
“We had to put her out. Somebody yelled for blankets. I grabbed mine and threw it over her,” she said.
Gonzalez was treated for smoke inhalation. The Red Cross relocated him and his wife and other residents to a temporary shelter. He wasn’t speaking to the media Sunday.
Moi, a Sudanese refugee who was living in a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor, suffered burns to the back of her head, arms and back, according to her roommate, Cecilia Achuka, 21.
Achuka was at work when she received a call from Moi’s cousin.
“Her cousin called me and told me ‘Your house is on fire,’ ” Achuka said.
Achuka and Moi met in Kenya and the two had lived in the apartment since August.
In all, 32 people, 10 of them children, remain displaced.
“The building isn’t burned to the ground, but it is completely uninhabitable. We’re not optimistic that much can be salvaged,” Roosevelt said.
The building’s third floor collapsed and the east side of the building is destroyed.
Fire investigators have not determined the cause of the fire.
The Red Cross is providing displaced residents with vouchers for food and clothes, and Thistle staff is attempting to relocate everyone to another apartment.
Urioste, her 4-year-old son, her sister Nikeea, and Nikeea’s 9-year-old daughter are staying with a friend who lives in the same apartment complex.
“It’s so surreal, it hasn’t hit us yet,” she said. “All our stuff’s gone.”
She recalled that she smelled smoke Saturday night and opened the cabinets under the kitchen sink and saw flames.
“It was just smoke, flames, and then fire above our heads,” Urioste said. “It was like a movie.”
Nikeea told the children, who had gone through a fire drill about two weeks ago, to run out. The two adults began banging on doors to get people out.
“My niece grabbed my son so the babies got out perfect,” she said. “I was banging on doors. I was screaming ‘This is for real, get out of your house!’ ”
Urioste said she and her sister called 911.
“We tried to save everyone,” Urioste said. “The girl behind us was just not so lucky.”
Sally S. Ho: 303-954-1638 or sho@denverpost.com
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
